The Oreads were the consorts of Artemis or Dianna [Roman], goddess of the hunt. The existence of such feminine deities of the hunt suggests that the conquered populations of Europe, brought under Aryan rule—as their men were slaughtered—had a strong hunting tradition, preserved in feminized myth, perhaps echoing the first modern human inhabitants of Europe.

The role of the queen as a benevolent mother, dispensing justice, remains alive in our symbolic scales of justice.